Ericast.com Podcasts - DWEEB THOUGHTS

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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Episode 8.1 - Ericast Update

A quick update on the latest cool thing I discovered -- a quick and dirty (but cheap... and did I mention quick?) process for digitizing 35mm slides. The upshot? Point a slide projector at a sheet of paper and snap digital pictures of the image. It's a bit more complicated than that, but not much. The results aren't great, but they're plenty tolerable, and it gets your old pictures out of a box in the basement and into the eyeballs of the people who care about those pictures!

Let me know what you think, and check out the blog (http://emlarson.blogspot.com/) for links to some of the latest experiments. (If you're pulling this out of the archive weeks and months after I posted it, you'll have to root around at emlarson.com or back in the blog archives to find what I'm talking about.)

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Episode 8 - "Finding Cheap Technology"

Featuring new and improved dead air! (Well, it features more than that, but "dead air" is actually a pretty prominent feature this week. You don't realize how dead it really is until you listen to it again... but, for you, you'll be listening to it for the first time!)

Actually, this week's discussion centers around "cheap computing" -- buying eMachines after rebate vs. getting used/refurbished machines, or the like. The point is, how can we get technology into the hands of people who could make use of it... and, on an economically-oriented note, is it only possible for some to save money because (necessarily) others are spending "too much"?

If that doesn't interest you, you'll get to hear my daughter's podcast debut! That should make this worth listening to!

Question: How's this audio quality for you? Would you prefer a larger podcast with higher-quality encoding, or can you hear and understand this stuff just fine? Let me know! E-mail me at ericast.com, or call 206-339-ERIC. Do it now!

Featured Links:

Monday, April 18, 2005

Episode 7.1 - Ericast Update

A new feature! Here's an update to yesterday's podcast. Be sure you download it (below, or on the April 2005 archive page) and not just this, because this is really lame without the full episode in context.

FYI, the link I reference in this update is at Sanswire.com.

Let me know what you think of the "update concept"!

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Episode 7 - "Changing Old Stuff"

This week's podcast also runs long, but that's mostly due to my failed attempt at "live-to-hard-drive" podcasting. You get to hear my... what should I call it... how about... angst! ...as I try to get everything recorded in one swell foop.

The topic this week is about historical stuff -- from touching sculptures to tinkering with epic movies. You'll have to listen to get all the details.

There's no word of the week, because nobody is telling me anything about "homage", so I'm declaring a word-of-the-week boycott until I get some input!

Music this week is "Great, Great Love" by Tim Lemmens, who can be found at http://www.timlemmens.com/

You can also read the entertainingly awful transcript and get an idea of how... "creative" the voice-recognition from Dragon NaturallySpeaking can be. Try to read along... if you dare!

Question: Do you want the bullet-point topics back, or is this format good enough? Let me know!

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Episode 6 - "Give Me Time!"

This week's episode runs a full 10 minutes -- 10 minutes! -- longer than "the norm", for a total run time of 32 minutes. Let me know if that's too long, or tolerable, or excellent, or whatever.

There's a lot to hear, ponder, and respond to in this podcast, so I expect each and every listener (that means you!) to get in touch with me, even if it's to say, "I have nothing to say". I'd appreciate that, just so I know you're still out there.

And, hey, wherever you are, it's probably spring... so get out there and enjoy the weather, too!

Topics

  • Call-of-the-week from Rob
  • Communicating and the desire to "hear ourselves"
  • Overscheduled kids and a breakdown of communication
  • Me and God -- I told you the topic would come up!
  • Paying homage to the word-of-the-week
  • A picture is worth no words at all, apparently
  • Music feature - Ben Lundquist's "Unclean"

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Episode 5 - "Podcasts with Pictures"

Amongst... is "amongst" even a word? ...anyway, amongst the miscellaneous greetings and celebration of Spring lies a theme of "enhanced communication" and discussion of text vs. audio vs. video and a combination thereof.

You'll hear a discussion of pairing pictures with podcasts, and I realized that it would be easier to illustrate than to explain. So, if you're listening to this from your computer (rather than from a portable MP3 player like an iPod), try going to the following site instead:

http://personal.stthomas.edu/emlarson/ericast/ericast_20050403.ram

...and you'll (probably... maybe...) see a slideshow running with the podcast audio in the background. That way, when I describe the whole "SMIL" thing in the podcast, you'll see an extremely rough and downright bad example of what I'm talking about.

(Of course, the usual program title link works like it has for the past four weeks, so you can still use that. Note that you'll need RealPlayer installed and functional for the SMIL slideshow link to work. In theory, QuickTime can handle SMIL as well, but I built this particular presentation with a RealPlayer tool so, of course, its code isn't fully compliant with SMIL standards and QuickTime won't handle it.)

This particular episode is also a good example of what happens when you assemble a show piece-by-piece over several days (or weeks!) and cut off segments in previous episodes. It gets confusing... but you might not notice, if I hadn't told you!

Topics
  • Greetings from our porch
  • Hello to Joann
  • Discussion of SMIL and photos
  • Is this a "niche" market?
  • Listener request from Texas
  • Last week's "On The Road" segment